Archive for January, 2007

Lance does a question and answer session with Austin Texas fans before heading off to the final bike race of his career, a bid to win his 7th Tour de France in a row. The setting was Lance’s new health club.

“After 26 years, you know the drill,” says the Chronicle. “This is your chance to duct-tape the critics’ mouths shut and speak up about Austin music. Not sure who to vote for? Turn on the radio, drop into the local record store, or head to the clubs tonight. Your favorite band is probably playing.” And give some consideration to our Austin favorite singer/songwriter Amy Cook.

Amy Cook’s new album, which will be officially released on February 16th, is featured on the Famecast “Show the World Your Talent” website. User comments on Famecast included “dreamy and beautiful”, “breathtaking video”, fabulous photography work, “marfa-lous song and video” and “good luck with the contest” Amy currently has 23 votes and, if you’re a fan, you may want to go there and cast your vote for Amy.

Jo’s Coffee has a new blog (4 days old) and they’re getting ready to host a series of great films, geek user group meetings, music events and other smokin’ events. They’ve equipped their coffeehouse with a high definition video / svga projector and surround sound system.

Jo’s Downtown will be rolling out it’s first film event Monday night, January 8th. Jo’s Downtown is located at 242 West Second Street, within a stone’s throw of the new rusty City Hall. Parking is free and plentiful in the City Hall garage. This the Future Film Forum Film Cluster‘s first showing at Jo’s Coffee on the new high definition video system. The Future Forum Film Cluster meets the first Monday of the month to watch and discuss a film. Films they have watched and discussed in the past include: Last Days of the San Jose, Born Into Brothels, Crash, Jarhead, Goodnight and Goodluck, and others. For more information, to suggest a film, or to be added to the Film Cluster list, please email Taline at Taline@austin.rr.com Shown in picture below:

Here’s a snippet from the Austin Chronicle on the film that will be shown. You can get the rest of the review at Austin Chronicle Screens.

If all you want is spin, you can get it six ways from Sunday on any subject, any day of the week. Op-ed columnists, administration apologists, bloggers, PR flacks, chat-show talking heads – they’re part of the army of agenda-pushers out there generating more spin than a platoon of whirling dervishes. But where can you go to hear straight talk on the state of the world today and, perhaps more significantly, the world our children will inherit?

As Austin writer/actor/filmmaker Turk Pipkin was pondering that question a few years back, he happened upon his then-preteen daughter Katie having a conversation with Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist. “She was probably about 10 years old at the time,” he recalls. “They met at a party and started talking about Texas fossils, and Katie was able to date these fossils, and they started talking about geology.”

From that discussion came the spark for Nobelity (www.nobelitythemovie.com, www.nobelity.org), Pipkin’s documentary featuring conversations with nine Nobel laureates about what’s in store for our planet over the next 50 years. The title, he says, springs from the idea that “they’re like our intellectual nobility.”

If you’d like to learn more about The Nobelity Project and its educational web-site, or would like to support The Nobelity Project’s non-profit work to bring clean drinking water to the children of St. Joseph’s Mahiga Primary School in Kenya, visit Turk Pipkin’s www.nobelity.orgIt didn’t hit my top ten list for last year solely because it was a work in progress and Turk had more work to do upon it, but it was slight. The fact is – it is absolutely brilliant. Listening to these minds share their insight upon the problems facing everyone upon every bit of this planet and how to solve them is essentially just stunning. This is one of the absolute most important films of this year or any year. – Harry Knowles, AintItCool.com “This film could have a huge impact on the world.” – Ann Richards Technorati Profile